Murderer executed as Schwarzenegger ignores mercy plea

A man convicted of murdering two women in 1981 over a drug deal was executed in California today, becoming the first inmate to be put to death by California in three years.

Donald Beardslee was executed by lethal injection shortly after midnight (8am Irish time) at San Quentin State Prison.

Thirty government officials, relatives of his victims and journalists were in the room, separated from Beardslee by a glass partition with curtains.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the US Supreme Court turned down last ditch pleas for mercy.

“The state and federal courts have affirmed his conviction and death sentence, and nothing in his petition or the record of his case convinces me that he did not understand the gravity of his actions or that these heinous murders were wrong,” Schwarzenegger said in his written denial.

Beardslee’s lawyers claimed he suffered from mental illness when he killed Stacey Benjamin, aged 19, and Patty Geddling, aged 23, to avenge a soured drug deal.

His two appeals before the Supreme Court included claims that the lethal injection he is due to receive at San Quentin State Prison constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, and that jurors were unfairly influenced when they delivered the death verdict.

The court denied his appeals without comment.

Defence lawyer Steven Lubliner said killing Beardslee was wrong. “It accomplishes nothing,” he said. “It demeans everyone.”

Beardslee chose not to have any of his family members witness the execution and has not had a family visit for at least the past month.

He spent the hours leading up to the scheduled execution in a waiting room, where he was able to watch television, read and talk to his spiritual adviser. He turned down a last meal, only drinking some grapefruit juice.

The last execution in California came on January 29, 2002, when Stephen Wayne Anderson was put to death for shooting an 81-year-old woman in 1980.

California has had 10 executions since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1977. More than 600 men are on the state’s death row.

A year ago, two-and-a-half months after he took office, Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Kevin Cooper, convicted in the hacking deaths of four people in 1983. Cooper later won a stay of execution from a federal appeals court.